Most people have heard of subliminal messages and backmasking. But if not, subliminal messages are hidden messages in movies, songs or possibly pictures. Backmasking is where you record a message, superimpose it and put it into a song backwards. It originally started with the Beatles as just an experiment. They put something like rain backwards in one of their songs. Soon the trend caught on an more musicians put backmasking in their music. Some musicians put backmasking messages into their songs just as a joke while others- Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and a whole other list of bands are accused of purposely putting satanic messages into their songs. I don't know how the got a few of them? I went to a backmasking site and listened to some and they sound like people were falsely accusing them of it.

But anyways there are also the subliminal messages using pictures in advertising mostly liquor advertisements and also in commercials and films. There is the ever so popular case of when they put in a picture of popcorn and soda in a movie and the sales went up 58%. There are a few messages in Disney movies that turned out to be true ie. The Rescuers and The Lion King. It's much easier to see them in magazine advertisements. Psychologists have done studies on backmasking and subliminal messages. In most cases they found very little effects came out of messages on backmasking songs. Yet, the same wasn't true for adding subliminal messages to images for viewers. Again the popcorn example stands true. I guess subconsciously we're more susceptible to images, I don't know?

Ok, now that all that background information on backmasking and subliminal messages is over I’ll get to the real point of this post. Out of all of the information I found on the internet I haven’t found anywhere that said subliminal messages were illegal. And even if they were illegal what would stop the government from using them? A professional hypnotist once came to our school and she said the easiest way for your subconscious mind to be controlled was when you were about to fall asleep in front of the television. Now when ever I turn on the tv I always see those Do all that you can do campaigns on joining the army, navy, and air force. I remember seeing a Simpson episode where Bart joins a pop group and they attract young people to watch them. While a navy officer is actually putting subliminal messages in their songs to join the navy. It’s a pretty funny episode where those girls sing yvan eht nioj over and over. But do you think this could have some truth to it? I don’t think the government would turn away the opportunity for more people to join, I think they would take the opportunity of using subliminal messages. They could even be in on with certain companies using different products to sway the opinions of the public. They could put any sort of message on the television- buy gas, taxes are good, or vote for so and so. Or even if you don’t think these kind of subliminal messages don’t work, I don’t have any doubt that the government has tried to put pro-government messages into our television sets.